


Daisy Chains of All Your Senses

by kayliemalinza



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-17
Updated: 2008-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James' slow dissolution into the pirate lifestyle; psychological transformation via dehydration. Jack and James are stranded on an island overnight. Set during that magical (read: non-canonical) period of DMC when Scruffy!James was sailing on the Pearl and no-one was worried about Elizabeth, krakens, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daisy Chains of All Your Senses

James' boots were planted in the sand like Jack's, and his trousers were as damped with sweat as Jack's, but Jack's boots were sifted ankle deep and his trousers creased on the edge of the steps. The shadow of the veranda cut sharp across his hips, swarmed up the ragged sash and puddled shirt, and fuzzed the splay of arms across the planked and varnished wood.

Jack, lying on the veranda with only his legs exposed to the sun, looked very comfortable.

James felt overwarm. He was staring at shadow-Jack because the white of the beach had stabbed the crease between his brows. He blamed that pain for the sudden inspiration that God must be a girl-child playing with her mother's magazines; the veranda seemed cut-and-pasted from a different, darker world.

James looked away and thought that girl was dropping tiny silver chains, laughing at their snake-like drop and twinkle. Then he felt a patter on his scalp and saw the chains for what they were: rainfall flashing in the sunlight.

With a sigh, he stepped into the shelter of the veranda. His boots clumped pale sand into the hard-wood triangle edged by Jack's chest and arm. Jack, his moustache twitching with a sleepful smile, raised a hand and patted James' boot-heel.

"The ship'll come back," he murmured, his eyes conservatively closed. "Take a seat."

James pulled his coat-front tight around his middle and settled himself on the step. Jack's hand relinquished the heel to rub his back half-heartedly and fall away.

"There's a good man," mumbled Jack. His face grew slack; his nose released a gentle snore.

James turned away from him to watch the glittered rain.

* * *

Inside the cabin, the chairs were made of driftwood. They were twisted, stumpy things. James expected them to split along their swollen seams and stayed away while Jack examined them with back and arse. Seated, Jack grinned at him reassuringly and wriggled in an orchestra of creaks.

"This is alright, innit?" he said, and swung his legs onto the table. James strode up and caught them by the ankles. Jack, watching amusedly, refused to put his legs back down so James sat upon the table edge, placing Jack's feet lightly on his upper thigh.

"It's rosewood," James said, tapping at the table's corner carvings, "of a far better quality than even the table in your cabin. This may run counter to your instincts, Captain, but we should be considerate of the most respectable object on this island."

Jack let out a low whistle. "Is it more respectable that your buttons?" he asked.

James looked out the window. One of his coat buttons, brass and Navy-stamped, pressed against his wrist. The edge was crimped and gentle like the whitecaps in the sundown sea.

Jack sighed and might have thrown his head back; his hair beads clacked. "That rosewood is a miracle of carpentry to be sure," he said, "but I would have rather more preferred a gentlemanly bed with pillows comfy as a lady's tits. Pearl's fast, but it'll be dawn like as not before she slips those Navy brutes and doubles back to get us."

"And then we'll dig up a chest of treasure and sail off to Tortuga to spend it all on whores and drink," James spat.

"Exactly," Jack said proudly. "You know James, I think you've finally got the gist of pirating."

"I'm sure Lord Forsyth intended for his _children_ to retrieve the heirlooms, not pirates," James said.

Jack shrugged. "It's been fifty years since he buried it and skedaddled off to parts unknown, if he did indeed skedaddle—some versions say he met a grisly end on this very island." Jack smiled brightly at James' baleful glance. "The way I figure it, if the chest hasn't been dug up yet, then his children were more than likely murdered in the slave rebellion after all." He stroked his beard-braids thoughtfully. "Unless they were captured," he said. "There's stories of pale-skinned Africans around these parts who wash down roasted bugs with tea."

James set his jaw and watched the sun's pink petticoats slip frothily from the sky. The moon poured silver on the sea as if the waves were ingot molds. James shook his head again at his queerly coiling thoughts and harkened back to shore leave down in India, where three pulls of the hookah made his fingers trill like wind-blown wheat and his midshipman's coat lay dripped and heavy on his arms like caramel.

"This life has turned my senses mad," he said. He looked at Jack and Jack was grinning, glinting gold from front to back.

* * *

They slept near the shoreline, where the sand was silver, plump, and scraggled through with bits of black.

James picked apart the soaked-soft bracken: tender marsh roots, the splinter of a palm frond. Jack pressed his face into his bunched up coat and fell fast to snoring with his feet splayed out.

"The world's a feather mattress to you, Sparrow," muttered James. He pursed his lips against the bitter lie. Jack slept on sand and stone more often than a bed; he escaped all deaths by falling sideways into opportunities that cut, and broke, and bruised. Jack was a green-hard mango rolling on the ground but James, born on sheets and coddled all his life with clothes and food and courtesy, was something soft. He was a steamed plantain that tumbled from the table: splat.

James did not settle down to sleep beside Sparrow. He leaned against the veranda steps and in his dreams, he wished he had some rum to drink.

He woke up because Jack was dripping saltwater on his nose. James shut his lips against the brine and stared at Jack, a step away from blind. The beach was white and ocean flash but Jack was black black black, a silhouette. James shut his eyes and Jack was still there, glowing green against the gold-speckled sky.

"Ship's coming in," Jack said, all gruff and rumble from the morning mist. "Should be a few hours, yet."

James said something that might have been "hmm" or "ah." Talk of ships and hours was irrelevant; he was not a man but a strip of skin bared to the world. Jack and ocean breeze and the corners of the steps were the tips of the little-girl-God's fingers. She was making daisy chains of all his senses.

Jack stretched his arms against the veranda and felt his shoulders pop. His boots were half beneath the crumbly sand and Jack was standing in the gap between them, bare ankles nudged against the seam of James' trousers. Jack's eyes were dark and pressing but he smiled placatingly.

"What say you to combing this small bit of island for the dear departed Forsyth's treasure, eh?" Jack said, rings and fingers twinkling. "Then we can dig it up and load it quick-like when the Pearl gets here, just in case your Navy lads are nipping at her heels."

James' lips were cracked and dry but he smiled anyway, smiled broader when his beard-growth tickled underneath the skin. Signal flags were falling from Sparrow's mouth and James could almost parse the code. What was his ship's number? Captain's greeting. We'll open up our stores and trade you hard tack for some rum. Or water.

Jack had three corners on his skull and they all tilted to the left. "Alright there, mate?" he asked softly, pushing his skull-with-corners forward to shield his eyes from the sun.

James nodded, smiled again. Strips of skin were good at smiling, curling like a housecat's belly when it stretched. He dragged his boots together through the sand and pressed his knees against Jack's calves.

Jack jostled and shot a wary look at James' growing grin. "Always set on trapping me, eh?" he said. "Ye'll have to do better than that."

James' eyes were lidding low; the world was just a white-black sliver. More important was the sun-heat licking swaths across his belly. He lifted a hand to wave his shadow-Sparrow closer in.

Jack obeyed for once, shuffling forward until his toes were wedged on either side of James' rump. He blocked the sun. James curled his fingertips into the old-soft cloth on Sparrow's hips and Sparrow dropped his fingertips there, too, slid his palms against the insistent bones of James' knuckles.

"Yer in m'clutches now," James mumbled.

"You've finally gone mad," Jack said, but did not disapprove.

**Author's Note:**

> Each section was written in response to prompts given by Order_of_Chaos. Prompts are as follows:
> 
> I.  
> pairing/tripling: Jack/James/Veranda  
> location and/or an important prop: beach  
> time of day and/or weather: sun shower
> 
> II.  
> event: nightfall  
> prop or object: driftwood  
> taste/color/smell: caramel
> 
> III.  
> event: amnesia  
> prop or object: ~~veranda~~ feline  
>  taste/color/smell: seawater


End file.
